55 联合国小组报告指出全球难民日益增多-英语课

时间：2019-01-04 作者：英语课 分类：VOA2001-国际风云（1）

英语课

US Group Reports Refugee Situation Growing Worldwide

Barbara Schoetzau

New York

20 Jun 2001 21:44 UTC

The independent U.S. Committee for 1)Refugees is observing the first international "World Refugee Day" Wednesday with the release of its annual report about 2)uprooted 1 people in 131 nations. The United Nations is also 3)commemorating the 50th anniversary of the U.N. 4)Convention on the Status of Refugees.

The United Nations estimates about 22 million people in the world are refugees. But the U.S. Committee for Refugees says the figure climbs to almost 35 million if internally 5)displaced persons are included.

The senior policy analyst 2 at the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Jeff Drumta, says the number of people uprooted in increasing.

"The five primary sources of uprooted people in the world are Sudan, which has produced 4.4 million; Afghanistan, four million; the Palestinians, who number four million," he said. "The fourth largest producer is Colombia, which is the source of 2.1 million uprooted people, and then Congo-Kinshasa, 2.1 million."

At the same time, Mr. Drumta says the U.N. refugee agency is facing what could be the worst financial 6)crisis in its history. He says the U.N. agency's 7)budget has had a deficit 3 of more than $100 million in each of the past two years.

"This has a real 8)impact on refugees in the field - refugee camps where food rations 4 are cut, refugee camps where medical care is reduced, medicines are not in the clinics," he said. "We have been in camps where new latrines cannot be built. So these dollar amounts have real impact on real people and it is very visible to refugees and the people who are trying to 9)assist them."

Mr. Drumta says the funding 10)shortages are due largely to reductions from European donor 5 nations.

The lack of money may be the major issue facing the U.N. agency and other groups working to help refugees. But it is not the only one. The policy director at the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Bill Frelick, says another concern is refugee safety.

"The idea that refugees cross a 11)border, say from Sierra Leone into Guinea, only to have the refugee camps in Guinea 12)overrun by violence and the camps themselves attacked as well," he said. "The same thing in East Timor, West Timor, where the camps in West Timor are controlled by militias 6. This is really unacceptable that people fleeing for safety, fleeing 13)persecution 7 will then be 14)subjected to those horrors all over again. In Africa alone, about two million refugees fled last year from areas where they were fleeing war and persecution into areas that themselves were subjected to violence."

Mr. Frelick says the safety of humanitarian 8 workers is also an issue. In the past nine years, 198 U.N. aid workers have been murdered on the job.

The United Nations General Assembly 15)unanimously adopted a resolution last December making June 20 World Refugee Day. The theme of this first observance is "respect" - respect for refugees, the contributions they make to societies, and respect for the 1951 Refugee Convention.